


you were the better part (of every bit of beating heart that i had)

by zoeyclarke



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Domestic Fluff, Dreams, F/F, One Shot, basically a few tiny bonus scenes about their life together post-manor and pre... well ya know, yes as much as i hate canon i am sticking with it here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27728102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoeyclarke/pseuds/zoeyclarke
Summary: “I love you, Dani Clayton. Don’t you forget that.”Marry me. If you asked me to right this second, I’d be your wife. Marry me, please.“Love you, too.”(Or: Dani's thoughts in the weeks before proposing.)
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 14
Kudos: 148





	you were the better part (of every bit of beating heart that i had)

**Author's Note:**

> attempting a repost due to (possible?) technical difficulties.
> 
> sorry the title is such a mouthful, but i liked it too much. it's taken from "you're somebody else" by flora cash.
> 
> okay...so...yeah. writing this thing brought me out of almost six months of writer's block, so kudos to the gays of bly manor for bringing me back. and yes i absolutely would marry victoria pedretti in a heartbeat, thank you very much.
> 
> anyway, please go easy on me because this is the first fic i've written in a while, and i still have yet to rewatch the series so forgive me for any little inaccuracies. i can't really explain this fic well (i mean, was it supposed to be coherent? oops!) but i hope you enjoy it nonetheless. it seems i've fallen for another dani now (after dani ardor from midsommar) so there's a chance i might be writing more, we'll see. in any case, thanks for reading!

Over cups of bitter coffee that were most definitely _not_ made by her, Dani decides to disturb the status quo.

The problem is, she _likes_ the status quo, and she likes maintaining it, one day at a time. But the other problem is that years ago, Jamie said she had a problem of her own and the problem was that she was in love with Dani, and Dani has never been able to get that out of her head since. 

Dani has also never loved someone this deeply, and it’s crazy, really, how far this love extends. She has already moved back stateside with Jamie, helped her acclimate to the rushed, distinctly American way of life (which, remarkably, still exists even in little Vermont), and eased her into having a taste for not-made-by-Dani coffee (Jamie likes it black and bitter, of _course,_ because _“drowning it in milk is an insult to the coffee beans who sacrificed themselves for this, Poppins,”_ though Dani would never dream of disclosing that the coffee beans likely didn’t have much choice in the matter).

And Dani has kissed every inch of her, has used her lips to trace freckle constellations on her arms and hips, has used her fingers to comb through her dark curls, only for Jamie to grumble and muss them up again. And Jamie has seen parts of Dani that she has never exposed to anyone else, picking away at her protective shield in fragments like peeling the shell off of a hardboiled egg. If she wanted, Jamie could easily wield an ice pick and drive it into Dani’s shield and violently shatter it. She could make everything pour out all at once, the way she told her own story that night with the moonflowers. But that’s just it— she doesn’t.

So, yes, Dani _likes_ the way things have been, but she _loves_ Jamie more. She loves her so very deeply, and it’s not going away anytime soon. Just like the vague outline that surrounds her own reflection, glinting and grinning at her in mirrors, distorted and frowning at her in wine glasses, glittering and rippling at her in bath water. Viola is with Dani, washing her in the depths of the lake at Bly late at night, in nightmares disguised as peaceful dreams. Even with features rubbed away by the lapping waves of time, Dani can still read her face.

Viola is with Dani, and Dani is with Jamie just the same. She worries sometimes that she is a plague to Jamie, afflicting and possessing her like a specter. Maybe she really was just nothing more than the floaty young American girl, drifting into Jamie’s life with cruel intent, pretty with her dreamy eyes and wispy hair, with a slight tremor in her hands and a void in her voice that act as a vague explanation of what she’s been through. But Dani doesn’t want to possess Jamie. And besides, she reminds herself, Jamie’s eyes are normal and they match and they are full of _Jamie,_ which means she is still stubbornly her own whole person, even when the rest of her body is entangled with Dani, holding Dani, drinking Dani.

Time presses on Dani now, but she doesn’t feel rushed. This has been years in the making. They live together, work alongside each other, eat together, sleep together. She did all these things with Eddie and that eventually led to him proposing, down on one knee in front of all the friends who had always been more his than hers. _“Danielle Violet Clayton... even if I hadn’t known you for all of my life, it would feel like I have.”_

The bonfire crackled next to him, and he’d perched his glasses a little higher up on his nose while holding the ring like it was a shard of ice in his other hand, fingertips barely touching it. Maybe it would melt away if she waited long enough. He’d pushed his glasses up a second time. The flames licked the lenses. Dani had lost touch for a moment, as she was starting to do more and more, and then answered yes to a question she hadn’t even heard because it felt like the next logical step. Her life didn’t have to be a puzzle, she thought. Why make it one?

(But, as she found out later, her life had always been a puzzle all along. When he died, the pieces scattered everywhere. She removed all the puzzles from her classroom after, not that her students missed them. They all went in the dumpster behind the school’s cafeteria, twenty-piece jigsaws, thousand-piece mysteries that could take up an entire weekend, and everything in between. Dani wasn’t sure anymore how many pieces were in her puzzle. Once, when she was in Flora’s closet, she thought maybe there were only two pieces: the lock in the door and a key, and nothing else. Or is that three?)

But she already cast those bones into the fire long ago. Dani drags herself back down to the table in the kitchenette of their apartment. It’s easy to float above herself, forget she’s sitting in a sturdy chair on the floor, cupping a hot mug in her hands. Right. Status quo. Interrupt it. 

“Um,” she coughs, and immediately Jamie’s eyes flick up from the newspaper to fix on her. She is endlessly attuned to Dani’s little flickering movements, poised to comfort and embrace if needed. Dani wants to kiss her solely because it makes her think of the lock and key. Maybe her puzzle really is just two pieces.

But fear chokes her next words, which, admittedly, weren’t planned out in the slightest. Dani shoves her mug into her face and focuses instead on the sting of scalding coffee searing her throat.

“Everything alright?” Jamie asks, a slight chuckle framing her question.

A breathless “Yeah” rushes out on a sigh. Dani’s mug lands back on the table a little too hard.

Jamie pinches her brow, and one side lifts into a telltale arch. “... ight. Sure there’s nothing you wanna share with the class?” She waves an arm toward the very empty room behind them. 

A helpless smile cracks Dani’s composure, and she bows her head into a giggle. “I’m _quite_ sure,” she tells her. Her useless brain offers a few suggestions for how that sentence could be completed, all too bold and too sudden for her: _I’m quite sure I’m more in love with you than I’ve ever been. I’m quite sure I want to spend the time I have left only with you, boring and all. I’m quite sure I want to marry you, Jamie._

“Okay, I’m gonna go open up shop, then,” Jamie says, draining her cup and rising from her seat. Though the lips she presses to Dani’s temple are fleeting, the kiss stays there all through the day until it is joined by numerous others later in the afternoon.

That same night, Dani dreams of the lake, as usual, but this time she is able to emerge from its depths, her jeans and denim jacket only drenched for a moment. When she enters the kitchen of the manor, she is warm and dry and smiling. She takes a seat next to Hannah at the table and accepts a cup of tea from Owen before he does a silly twirling maneuver back to the stove. Miles and Flora sit across from her, squabbling over something trivial like real children do. Then Jamie saunters into the room, earth-crusted gloves tucked in the pocket of her overalls. She approaches Dani from behind and Dani leans back in her chair, pressing into Jamie’s chest until she feels her heartbeat. Dani doesn’t mind the dirt under her fingernails when Jamie is running her hands through her hair. They spend hours like this, frozen yet fluid in this snippet of time while their loved ones exist and live around them. And Dani wakes to the same feeling, green thumbs brushing away blonde strands.

* * *

She needs a ring. The thought occurs to her about a week after she came to her decision (and then right away chickened out of voicing it, but that’s not here nor there). It’s amusing that this thought arrives at the doorstep of her muddled brain at this particular moment, when Jamie is fucking her insanity away on the sofa at three in the afternoon on a Sunday. Ironically, it’s usually during sex when Dani reaches the peak of clarity (among other peaks). It reminds her that she is still more human than dead, that she loves and is fully capable of loving, and that she _is_ loved. Hearing her name— not “Poppins,” but _“Ah, Dani,” “Fuck, Danielle”—_ cloaked in Jamie’s intoxicating accent, feeling lips brushing her skin like Jamie has secrets that can only be shared between herself and Dani’s body— it all culminates into pure sanity for Dani. Jamie drives her _sane._

So the ring realization is tucked sneakily between much dirtier thoughts, but it is noticed nonetheless.

Is it just an excuse to postpone the chance of rejection that Dani is so terrified of? She could braid together two blades of grass and knot it around Jamie’s finger and she would be overjoyed to wear it.

No, no, she tells herself. This _isn’t_ an excuse. Jamie deserves something real, because she reminds Dani that she is real. And with that in mind, Dani cups her girlfriend’s face in her hands, pulls her lips up to her own, and suffocates the worry in a bruising kiss.

Jamie laughs at her sudden fervor, but doesn’t protest it. She buries her hands in Dani’s hair, losing her fingers in the tangle of pale blonde waves. Her flannel shirt is old, one of the last few carryovers from the Bly days, which is no surprise because Jamie holds on to her clothes far longer than Dani does (maybe because she knows who she is and what she likes, the dark side of Dani’s mind taunts her. Maybe because she’s secure with herself, while _you_ always end up staring into the fitting room mirror and deciding this is a skin you will be comfortable with for just a little while). Her flannel is unbuttoned, courtesy of Dani’s nimble hands (always shaking, though, like she’s uncovering this treasure for the first time). No bra, shorts on the floor. 

Hands find Dani’s shirt and nudge it off her shoulders. The air in the apartment is perpetually chilly and its bite takes aim at the skin on her neck, only to be smothered shortly after by Jamie’s hot caress. She pushes Dani’s hair away for better access, which Dani aids by tilting her head. She sighs softly and closes her eyes.

That night, she can leave the lake again. Her sweater is warm and dry. Instead of entering the house, she wanders around the statue garden. She stumbles on something in the darkness and looks down to see a shotgun laying in a bed of hastily-cut rose stems. The next morning, she shuffles into the kitchen with a yawn distorting her jaw and finds a vase of freshly cut roses sitting on the counter. “Just because,” Jamie explains. She’s always awake before Dani.

“They’re beautiful,” Dani tells her.

“They’re no moonflowers, but—”

“They’re beautiful,” Dani asserts. She pecks her nose and goes to pour her coffee.

* * *

They don’t go out much, but Dani likes it that way. That’s why she wouldn’t dream of proposing in even the quietest and littlest of cafes. It needs to be at home, in private, only Dani and Jamie. As if they’re still just the gardener and the au pair, having an illicit affair in corners of hallways, behind closed doors, in stairwells and closets and the greenhouse. In the end, they were just the gardener and the au pair caught in the web of a bigger fate than they were meant for. And the gardener and the au pair is really all they will ever be, Dani thinks. Bly was full of unlocked doors, and Dani wanted it to be so life was full of them too. She just needed to pick the right one, the one that had Jamie waiting behind it.

Right now they’re in the quietest and littlest cafe, one just down the block from where they live. They sit in one of only two booths, though Dani has her eye on the door in case a bigger group comes in that would need the space more than just the two of them.

Jamie doesn’t do well concealing her eye roll. “Nobody’ll come in and need our booth, Poppins.”

Dani continues staring over her shoulder for a moment more, then rests her eyes on Jamie’s smirk instead. She exposes only half a smile. “You don’t know that,” she points out.

The waitress drops off their drinks with a grin and fluttery wink. Jamie has already charmed her, as she has most of the town’s residents. Dani doesn’t mind being the passive observer in most of the meaningless, small talk-y conversations, smiling and nodding as needed. Jamie has told her she thinks people talk to her just to hear her accent, the way she shapes words and names with her tongue. To that, Dani replied (feeling quite cheeky that particular day) that she knew what Jamie’s tongue did best, and it wasn’t speaking with an accent. Besides, Dani knows that a good portion of the townsfolk here, open-minded and quietly accepting as they are, have realized that Dani and Jamie are more than just “those nice young women who live together in the apartment above the flower shop.” Truthfully, they both have charmed everyone simply by existing here.

Before Dani can even reach for it, Jamie has already squirted the “unnecessary” dollop of honey in Dani’s tea for her. Before Jamie can retract her hand, Dani takes it and pulls their hands down so they can loosely weave fingers together across the table. Jamie pays no mind to the loss of one hand, seamlessly using her free one to switch between lifting her mug to her lips and turning pages in her book. It’s one of her favorites, a novel that would be dog-eared by now if it wasn’t hardcover, read over and over again. Dani got it for her a few years ago. It would’ve been considered an anniversary gift if their true anniversary date wasn’t lost in the haze that was her time at Bly Manor. Time presses on Dani, but she doesn’t keep much track of it. In fact, she knows it’s a special day when Jamie _doesn’t_ give her flowers. _“Flowers are too easy,”_ she always says, before taking Dani’s hand and twirling her across the threadbare rug in their living room.

Dani thinks she has lived three different lives. Jamie has been part of two of those. Dani would rather not remember much of her first life: her difficult mother, a wedding dress whose lace never should have touched her skin, Eddie. But now the weather lady on the tiny television mounted above the far counter looks like Eddie’s mother, the last person Dani spoke to in her first life. She trembles and squeezes Jamie’s hand.

“How much do you think they remember? About what happened?” It’s a question that has been asked time and time again, and each time it is given a new answer.

Jamie shuts her book and gives Dani her full attention. Her playful grimace is a forecast for dry wit. “Ah, I dunno, I think Owen has roughly the memory span of a middle-aged dog, so...” Dani tilts her head and widens her eyes ever so slightly, and that effectively steers Jamie’s response onto a different track. “I mean... Miles and Flora were just kids,” she says. “How much _could_ they really remember, after however many years?”

“I hope they remember Hannah, if nobody else sticks. She adored them.” Dani’s breath scrapes up her throat as she stirs her tea. It’s been a few months since she last got like this.

“Yeah,” Jamie says softly.

“I wish I knew her like the rest of you did.”

“You _did_ know her, she just—” Jamie cuts herself off, lifting her drink to her lips and staring at a point over Dani’s shoulder. Then, all at once, she squeezes Dani’s hand and sets an intense stare upon her, a stare that might feel suffocating to others but only ever feels like a hug to Dani. “I love you, Dani Clayton. Don’t you forget that.”

_Marry me. If you asked me to right this second, I’d be your wife. Marry me, please._

“Love you, too.” Hand squeeze. Tender gaze. Hours later, empty glasses of wine and half-finished dinner plates accompany slippery clothes and the tang of a just-snuffed-out candle. It’s taken her years to figure it out, but there is no one way she is _supposed_ to love someone— she just _loves,_ period. And that’s it.

That night, Dani makes it into the manor. When she falls asleep facing Jamie, she is usually able to. She manages to find the one locked door in the whole place: Flora’s closet. A blink, and then she’s on the other side of it, closed in. She presses her hand to the door knob, and her fingers fuse with the aged metal. She can’t hear her cries for help, but she can feel them tearing up her throat like razors. And then the door opens, a key slicing through her palm but leaving no mark. The door swings open, and there Jamie stands, smiling, holding the key. Maybe, in her sleep, Dani is still in her second life.

* * *

Years later, time still presses on Dani, but she doesn’t pay it much mind. She sleeps a lot of the time now, and will wake for her purpose. The door she comes up to tonight is plain and smooth. It isn’t Flora’s closet door. Most coherency has faded from her mind, but Dani knows this: If a door is left open, it doesn’t need a key. These doors never need keys. Unlocked, propped open, wide open, she always finds them just so. Jamie always leaves the door open. The only thing that sticks in her mind is _Jamie, Jamie, Jamie,_ and that’s it. Jamie was a name once, Dani thinks. It wasn’t always so abstract. Jamie is a feeling, Jamie is the knowledge of something that once existed, Jamie is the thin, ring-shaped outline around the fourth finger of her left hand. Tonight Dani enters the room and knows, vaguely, _somewhere,_ that she is where she’s meant to be. She enters the room. The ring reappears. The feeling blossoms. _Jamie, Jamie, Jamie._ Nothing else matters, because all else has faded into just that: nothing.

* * *

But that is years later. Right now, Dani kneels down outside their front door, holding a plant in one hand— gently, gritting her teeth, silently apologizing to it for the abuse— and in her other hand, tucked into her palm inside a fist, warm and soothing like a mouthful of tea, is a ring.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, turning the plant over and examining its parched roots. Clumps of old soil fall to the floor. “It’ll be worth it, I promise,” she assures it. Jamie always tells her that they’ll take things one day at a time. But right now, Dani is so anxious she’s taking it one minute at a time. Five minutes from now, if all goes well, she’ll be engaged. Married in spirit, because she can’t marry Jamie like she could’ve married Eddie. They’ll be married. She goes over what she wants to say in her head, again. _We’ll wear the rings and we’ll know._

Five minutes. Less than that, really. Dani nestles the ring underneath the plant, making sure it’s hidden from view when it is back in the pot, to be found easily once it is lifted out again. Dani thinks of all the plants Jamie has nurtured, the most brittle roots revived in the dead of winter, moonflowers raised in the frosty English woods, and even Dani herself, green thumbs streaking through her hair and over her skin. Loved.

She rises to her feet and peers down at the plant in her hands. Jamie will probably want to name this one. George, maybe. It looks like a George. Dani takes a deep breath and stares at the door. Just from looking at it, she knows it’s unlocked. Just from looking at it, she can see through it and imagine what’s on the other side: her girlfriend, lazily stirring a wooden spoon in a pot on the stove, hair tied back. She will look over her shoulder when Dani walks in, and smile like she hasn’t seen her in such a long time.

One day at a time. One minute at a time. Dani pushes another breath through her lungs, then steps into the next minute of her life and opens the door.


End file.
